Oedipus Abstract

Playing to the Audience: The Relationship between the Chorus and the Audience in Sophocle's Oedipus The King This paper will examine the relationship between the audience and the chorus in Sophocle's Oedipus the King through spatial arrangement, emotional intensification, and social status. Examining this relationship provides insight into the immediacy of the original production of this play for Athenians in the 5th century BCE in Athens. In order to attempt to better understand the chorus-to-audience relationship, we must begin our examination prior to the performance of the play. The tragedies were performed during festivals, such as the City Dionysia, which was a religious, state, and social affair. The Theatre of Dionysos was located in the sanctuary of the the god, just beneath the Parthenon and the Acropolis. One could argue that due to this location beneath a monument of the power of the polis and inside a religious sanctuary, the theatre is a politically and religiously charged space. As the audience entered the theatre, one can assume that they would be aware of their surroundings. They would have walked through the sanctuary and had a clear view of the Acropolis as they climbed to their seats in the theatron. As inhabitants of Athens participating in a festival, they bring a social dynamic to the political and religious stirrings already present in the theatre. As the play begins, the suppliants and priest, possibly a part of the chorus, enter the orchestra via one of the paradoi, the same way the audience entered. They may have entered from the stage left parados which would lead to the Athenian agora and the Acropolis. Already there is a connection between the audience and the chorus. Oedipus then enters upstage and center from the skene doors and addresses the suppliants. This stage picture creates a mirror image to that of the audience. The audience sits beneath the Parthenon, a symbol of state power, as this portion of the chorus supplicates themselves as an audience to the powerful Oedipus, who has entered from his palace, the skene. The architectural space becomes power above audience and mirrored on the stage with audience beneath power (see figures 1 and 2). After the parados, the chorus will assume the role of audience to the events. This mirroring will continue for the rest of the play. The priest, in the prologue, informs Oedipus and the audience that the suppliants present are of every age and that all of the other people are also acting as suppliants in the agora (15-20). The chorus has now been established as inhabitants of Thebes just as the audience members are inhabitants of Athens. The two groups have an established commonality. Oedipus commands the priest and suppliants to call the Theban people, the chorus, to assemble (144). The priest has only a few lines and then, in the text, comes the first choral ode. Obviously the suppliants and priest must leave as they have been commanded and fetch the others. They more than likely exit via the stage left parados in which I am assuming they enter due to its relationship to the agora. After a pause, the chorus enters, also probably from stage left. David Seales in his book Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles, says that this exit and entrance is not awkward, as has been said, and should not be hurried since the “ample space of the theatre facilitates such movements” (Seales 220). He does not assume that the priest and suppliants join the rest of the citizens, but I ask: “Why not?” They too are citizens and have already forged a connection with the audience. It would make sense for the priest who brought the suppliants before Oedipus to lead them away and then return again with the rest of the Thebians. At this point in the performance, the relationship between the chorus and audience has already been established through a common social status and role of witness to the dramatic action. The audience now has a special connection with the chorus and is more likely to share the concerns and emotions presented by the chorus.

Due to space, I will not provide detailed examples for the emotional intensification of a chorus of actors performing the same reaction. However, this intensification occurs in several forms: the reaction of the chorus during the episodes to the action, the reaction of the chorus during the odes to the previous episode, and the actions of the chorus as stage directions found in the text. The most obvious example here is the final episode when the blind Oedipus enters. The chorus expresses horror at Oedipus' condition and say that they are not able to look at him (1303). This emotional moment must have been incredibly intense for the audience with the opening of the doors and entrance of Oedipus, the lament and shock of the chorus en masse, and then their abrupt shift to look away from him. The mirroring and likely reference to the Athenian agora in the staging also provides an element of immediacy to the audience. In this way, there could possibly be allusion to recent events in the choral odes. R.W.B. Burton in his book The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies refers to possible moments of contemporary allusion. He sites the choral ode provoked by Jocasta's speech to disregard prophesies. According to Burton, there is an inscriptions from only a few years earlier that stemmed from such ideas in Athens and reads “oracles must be trusted” (Burton 156). There may also be a connection via the pestilence suffered by the chorus if the play was performed in the early years of the Peloponnesian war when crops were destroyed by invasion and a plague overtook Athens. - Katrina Bondari

Plates

Parthenon

Power Mirrored Power

skene theatron

Audience orchestra

Mirrored Audience

Stage Directions

Upstage Stage Right

Stage Left Downstage Audience